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The flutter of a dress, white like the wings of the moths clustered
thickly around the candles and lamps illuminating the ballroom,
disappeared into the shadows of the palace gardens and Damon was left
to stare after the girl he'd just tried to kiss, her discarded shoe in
his hand. Already, he was starting to wonder what he'd done, but the shoe he held, a dancing slipper, a pretty piece of frippery, prevented him from passing it off as a wine-soaked fancy. The slipper was real; the pearl-white satin stained with grass where its owner had stumbled, startled by the chimes of midnight from the clock tower. The delicately vicious point of toe and heel, designed to make a lady's foot seem impossibly tiny as it peeked from beneath a froth of silk, both left a dent on his questing fingertip as he searched for a clue. Laughing softly at himself -- what, had he expected her name to have been inscribed on it, as an inky-fingered schoolboy would do to safeguard his belongings? -- he tossed it into the air and caught it, still staring out into the stiffly formal gardens, lit by the full moon, all silver and black, the rigid, clipped regularity of bush and tree and bed softened and blurred. "An odd keepsake, Your Highness." A tall figure walked up the wide, low terrace steps toward him. Damon didn't need a better light to recognize Pavare, Duke of Selsis, Lord of the Northern Marches. No one else at court had his height, his breadth of shoulder, his rakish, slightly dissolute, arrogance. And none, of those whose fealty was accepted by the king, at least, had his reputation, whispered about in shocked, gleeful tones by the envious or cowardly; openly, roundly condemned by… well, no one. None would dare; my Lord Pavare's blade was so very swift to answer… and a woman with a sharp tongue and a habit of frankness who might feel herself safe if she indulged the latter whilst using the first, was mistaken if she had husband, son, or brother of an age to meet Pavare in the misty dawn -- and be buried before the next sunrise. Damon studied the slipper. Safer to look at the pearls studding the heel, the diamonds flashing coldly on the buckle, than the gray eyes and thick black hair, unpowdered and carelessly drawn back off the thin, pale face, of the man approaching. Pavare… disturbed him. Sometimes walked in his dreams as he lay restless and fevered in his room, the arched ceiling painted in gilt and cream and scarlet festoons, as befitted a prince's chamber, historic scenes picked out on the paneled walls, meant to inspire him, remind him of whom he was and his duty. In his dreams, Pavare was rarely kind, but there was a certain tolerant amusement in the gray eyes that met his gaze when he finally lifted it from the slipper. His own eyes were blue eyes, summer eyes, to go with his golden hair; the court poets harped on that theme endlessly, until he longed for dull brown locks and a nondescript hazel instead, just to spite them. Return to Home Click here to e-mail the author |